The Captain's Christmas Bride

She didn’t dare glance over her shoulder, not even when they plunged into the pitch darkness of the path through the shrubbery. And especially not when they emerged again, round the back of the house, where some light did filter out through one or two unshuttered windows, making the glass roof of the orangery glitter as though it was sprinkled with sequins.

She’d chosen to take David to the orangery because it would be lovely and warm in there. It was tacked on to the back of the kitchens where specially designed flues kept her father’s collection of rare tropical plants frost-free throughout the winter. Gatley, the head gardener, had locked the door when the first of the house guests arrived, to prevent anyone wandering in and then carelessly leaving the door open when they wandered out again. But the lock on one of the sash windows, which could be raised or lowered during the summer months for ventilation, was broken. She’d made sure of it that very afternoon.

Julia had to let go of his hand while she pushed the sash window up, but that didn’t matter. He wouldn’t have come all this way only to run away now.

She stepped over the sill, and stood to one side so he could do the same. Then she carefully lowered the sash again. Gatley would be livid if his precious plants were exposed to a draught. Anyway, she didn’t want to be exposed to a draught either. Not when there was so very little gown draping any part of her body.

Goodness but it was dark in here. Only a faint glimmer of moonlight peeked in through the roof. The massed palms at the east end of the orangery curtained the interior from any light that might have found its way this far from the house.

But the darkness seemed to make David uncharacteristically bold. He didn’t even wait for her to turn round before sliding his arms round her waist, and bending his head to kiss her cheek. As his lips brushed her skin, sending delicious shivers right down her spine, she felt his tricorne hat tangle with her feathers.

With a low growl, he pulled off his hat, and his wig, and tossed them aside. Then stooped to lay the telescope down on top. She turned round, longing to be in his arms again, but face-to-face this time, so that he could kiss her properly. On the lips. And so, as he straightened up, she flung her arms round his neck and pressed her lips to his before he could say anything, or required her to say anything that would give her away, and have him marching her back to the house, scolding her all the way.

And, oh, joy! He put his arms round her, and kissed her back.

At last. At last. And, oh, it was every bit as magical as she’d ever dreamed. Better. For now she was in his arms, he seemed taller and broader, and so very much more...muscular, and masculine, than she’d expected.

Her heart pounded, her breath shortened as though she’d been running. Actually, her feet were moving, now she came to think of it. For he’d turned her round a bit, and was steering her toward the rear wall. Against which there was a bench. Oh, clever, clever David, to remember the bench where they’d all sat on rainy days, talking of every topic imaginable. Until, that was, her father had warned him off.

He kissed her all the way to the bench, then let go of her with one hand to feel his way down to the cushions. He sat, and pulled her down after him. Not that she needed much of a pull from his hand. It had taken all her resolve to stop herself from flinging herself onto his lap. Except he didn’t pull her onto his lap, but onto the bench next to him. Oh, well, it was almost as good. It was heaven to feel his mouth on hers once more. Such heaven, that she put up no resistance at all when he pushed against her, and kept on pushing, until she was sprawled rather inelegantly on her back with him half over her.

Never mind the inelegance of the sprawl, she sighed. It felt too wonderful to feel his weight bearing down on her. She put her arms round his neck, kissing his face and caressing his shoulders to encourage him to keep on doing what he was doing. Because if Marianne and Nellie found them together like this, then there was no way he could deny he’d crossed the line.

Though, ought she to let him be quite so free? His hands were exploring rather more of her than she’d expected. And a deal more roughly. Not that he was hurting her, on the contrary, it was all very stimulating.

She did let out a shocked gasp when he delved into the front of her bodice and scooped out her left breast. But it didn’t stop him raising it to his mouth, and lashing it with his tongue.

Heavens, it was as though she’d unleashed a wild animal.

She’d never dreamed David could be so...unruly.

Or so exciting.

At last he’d abandoned all his stuffy principles about the way a gentleman should behave. Where, now, was his declaration that he was beneath her station? That he couldn’t aspire to her hand?

Sacrificed, apparently, to his determination to get beneath her skirts.

So forgetful of his station was he, that he was actually reaching down, seizing a handful of her gown and pushing the material up her legs.

All thoughts of Marianne and discovery went up in smoke when he moaned into her cleavage at the exact moment his hand reached the soft flesh of her inner thigh. He was being so eager, so ardent. If anyone dared to interrupt them now, she would probably scream with frustration.

For this was absolutely heavenly. She’d never felt anything so utterly delightful.

Until his exploration became shockingly intimate.

She winced, and yelped, at the startling, and rather painful intrusion of his fingers.

‘I’m sorry,’ he growled into her ear. ‘I thought you were ready.’

Ready? For him to touch her there? How could she have imagined he’d want to do such a thing? Not that she could protest. Else he might stop altogether. Which was the last thing she wanted. They had to be discovered locked in a passionate embrace, not sitting next to each other demurely begging each other’s pardon.

While she was still puzzling over what response she ought to make, he dropped to his knees on the floor and pushed her skirts right up to her waist. She almost cried out a protest. It had been hard enough having her bosom on show all evening let alone her most private parts. Not that he could actually see anything in the darkness, nor was he trying to, Julia suddenly realised in shock. What he was doing was lowering his head and kissing her. Nibbling at the top of her tightly clenched thighs, and then, when the sheer bliss of it had her relaxing, he pushed her legs apart so that he could kiss the exact place where his hand had ventured.

Julia almost panicked and pushed him away. Surely he couldn’t want to kiss her there? Could he?

Oh, heavens, whatever was she supposed to do now? What would Nellie do in her place? Was she used to men doing this sort of thing? Was she...?

Oh, heavens but that felt...

Oh, goodness, if he kept on doing that...

Oh, goodness, she hoped he would keep on doing that. That was...that was...

Excitement built in her, just as though he’d lit a fuse. It went fizzing through her, burning brighter and brighter, until somehow, she knew, there was going to be some sort of explosion.

It burst through her, startling a scream of pleasure from her throat.

He knelt back with a satisfied growl. Got up, bent one of her lax legs at the knee and propped it up against the wall. He then pushed the other down so that her foot was on the floor and came back down on top of her.

‘Unnhhh...’ She tried to say something, anything. But she was still stunned by the force of the explosion that had just flung her skyward. She was still floating, somewhere far above the earth, as he settled between her legs.

It was only when he surged forward she realised that at some point he’d undone his breeches and was sliding inside her. She tensed, remembering the discomfort his fingers had caused. But this didn’t hurt. Not even when he started thrusting into her—clutching at her bottom with one hand, and propping himself against the kitchen wall with the other.

And then he exploded, too. She felt him pulsing deep inside her as his whole body shuddered over her.

She slid her arms round his neck, hugging him in sheer delight.

‘Oh, David,’ she sighed. ‘We’ll have to get married now.’

He tensed.

Well, she’d been prepared for that. He must be shocked to learn that she was the woman he’d just ravished.

But before he could say anything, someone flung up the sash window and stepped into the orangery.

He didn’t have time to do more than lift his head and swivel it in that direction, before the light of two lanterns flooded the scene, clearly showing the unmasked faces of the three people standing there.

The Neapolitan Nightingale, her mouth agape.

And Marianne, her hands clasped to her bosom.

And, worst of all... David.

Chapter Two

‘David?’

No! If David was standing over there, by the window, then who was this man who’d just...who she’d just permitted to...

Her stomach froze into a solid block of ice. David’s face contorted with disgust.

‘Cover yourself,’ he said.

The man on top of her twitched the full skirts of his coat over her exposed thigh. Though there was nothing he could do about her leg from knee to toe.

‘If you wouldn’t mind giving us some privacy,’ he drawled in the hatefully cutting way that identified him at once. ‘I can hardly...disengage, with you three standing there staring.’

Marianne gave a little whimper, and sagged at the knees. David put his arm round her shoulder and pulled her face to his chest.

The Nightingale clapped her hands over her mouth.

And Julia clamped her jaw against a wave of nausea. David was standing over there. Which meant she had her legs wrapped round the waist of another man. And not just any man, but the very last man she’d have suspected of being able to act like...like this.

Captain Lord Dunbar. The dour Scotsman who’d arrived uninvited a couple of days ago and had been acting the part of spectre at the feast ever since—skulking on the sidelines and glowering particularly ferociously at anyone who dared look as if they were enjoying themselves too much.

‘Wait!’

As the three witnesses to her downfall turned to leave, the man she’d just seduced by mistake barked out the single word in a forceful way that only served to confirm his identity. Only a man used to command could make perfect strangers stop in their tracks that way. A man who was used to storming enemy ships and cutting his opponents to ribbons. A man who would have been perfectly at home on the deck of a ship tossed by a howling gale, but who’d looked stifled by the social niceties of a drawing room.

‘You will none of you speak of this,’ he informed them. ‘Not until I have had a chance to speak to the young lady’s father.’

David swelled and quivered with indignation. ‘If you think I would ever stoop to blacken the name of a lady, no matter what her conduct—’ he flicked her another disgusted look that flayed her like a whip ‘—then you are very much mistaken.’

Oh, David. She’d lost him. Irrevocably. She’d never be able to look him in the face again, after this, never mind persuade him that, despite the difference in their stations, she’d make him a good wife.

‘And I could never, never speak of it,’ added Marianne in woeful indignation.

‘I definitely don’t want anyone knowing I had a hand in any of this,’ added the Nightingale.

‘Would it be too much to ask for one of you,’ Captain Dunbar said in the sarcastic way that never failed to set Julia’s teeth on edge, ‘to leave us a lantern?’

Marianne placed hers on the floor. Well, she wasn’t going to need her own, since David was holding her in such a protective embrace. No chance of her tripping over a loose flagstone on the way back to the house.

There was an awkward little interlude after the others had left, during which Captain Dunbar disentangled himself from her and briskly readjusted his clothing. Julia just about managed to swing both legs to the floor though they felt all weak and wobbly.

Oh, heavens! Now she knew just what a spent rocket felt like. Two minutes ago she’d experienced a kind of fire-bursting ecstasy. Now she just felt used and shattered.

* * *

Damn it all to hell and back! Snared by the oldest trick in the book. By a green girl, which was worse. Lady Julia, if he wasn’t mistaken. The two sycophants, who normally trailed everywhere after her, wouldn’t have cared tuppence what happened to any of the other guests at this house party.

Just to make sure, though, he untied the ribbons holding the elaborately decorated mask over her face. She barely reacted. Just sat there, shoulders hunched, gazing miserably at the floor, in the position she’d adopted after sitting up and smoothing down her skirts with trembling hands.

She looked as broken as the peacock feathers that had snapped off some time during their frenzied coupling.

Hell. He looked at the bedraggled mask dangling from his calloused fingers. Lady Julia had been a virgin. Of course she’d been a virgin. And he’d just treated her as though she was an experienced courtesan.

Though wasn’t that what she’d wanted him to believe? Else why sidle up to him and get him all primed, then run him out here and set the spark to the touch hole?

It was her own fault.

He clenched his jaw, recalling her yelp of discomfort when he’d started exploring her. He had been impatient. Rough. He’d probably torn her then, with his fingers. He’d certainly felt no resistance when he’d entered her. Just a slick glide into the haven he’d sought ever since coming ashore two weeks earlier.

But blast it all—he’d have stopped if he’d sensed she was a virgin.

He would.

She lifted her head and met his furious gaze full on. ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’

Defiance burned from her eyes—eyes that looked too big, too bright. And luminous with unshed tears.

‘I’d like to say plenty,’ he snarled. ‘But the sad truth is, the only words spoken between us tonight have already said it all. We are going to have to get married.’ There was no other way out. Not for him. His whole future depended on maintaining a spotless reputation. It wouldn’t have mattered so much during the height of the war. An able, hard-working, skilled captain would always have been able to get command of a ship. But now?

And it wasn’t just his own career he had to consider. He couldn’t afford to become one of those officers who were only considered safe at sea. If it got about that he went about debauching unmarried, titled ladies he wouldn’t be welcome anywhere. Which would cast a cloud over Lizzie’s reputation, too. So far, his sister had done really well for herself. Sending her to that exclusive, expensive school had meant she was rubbing shoulders with girls from the best families. She’d even gained an invitation to this Christmas house party because of a connection to one of the Earl of Mountnessing’s nieces.

But if word got out that her brother was a rake, what would that do to Lizzie’s standing in society? To her chances of making a good match?

‘No,’ Lady Julia whispered.

She couldn’t marry this man. She was going to marry David.

David.

‘No...’ she moaned as the truth hit her squarely in her midriff. David would never marry her now. He had such high ideals. He could never marry a girl he’d caught with her legs wrapped round another man’s waist. No matter how highly he’d esteemed her before.

Alec squared his shoulders, remembering all the promises he’d ever made to his little sister. His promise that no matter how little they saw of each other, he’d always look after her. His promise that she would never go hungry, nor fear being made homeless. But most of all, his promise to be the kind of man on whom she could depend—unlike their scapegrace of a father.

He’d kept his word all these years. And he wasn’t going to break it now. He’d always done whatever necessary to shield Lizzie from the worst excesses of their father. And now he was going to have to do what was necessary to shield her from his own excesses, tonight.

‘Ye cannot say no to me like that as though you have a choice,’ he snarled. ‘D’ye think I want to marry you either? Hell, you’re the last woman alive who would make a suitable wife for a man like me. You’re too young, too foolish, and entirely too untrustworthy to leave alone while I’m away at sea.’

‘How dare you—?’ she began, getting to her feet.

‘Don’t waste those hoity-toity manners of yours on me. We’re not in some drawing room now, where you can get away with looking down your nose at me, just because you think I’m uncouth.’

Though she looked as though she would dearly love to answer back, she restricted herself to a toss of her head, and a disapproving sniff. Because he’d hit the nail on the head. She’d queened over the tea table too many times to be able to refute his accusation. She’d looked down her aristocratic little nose at him when he’d been rude to one of the dozens of simpering misses infesting her father’s house. Though being rude was the only way he’d found of fending them off. If he was polite, they kept on cooing over him. And batting their eyelashes at him. And sighing over his supposed heroic exploits, which they claimed to have heard all about.

And trying to manoeuvre him underneath one of the kissing boughs.

Julia alone had turned her nose up at him. He’d assumed it had been because she was too high in the instep to look twice at an impoverished sea captain, no matter how heroic the newspapers made him out to be. Instead, all the time, she must have been planning a far more effective stratagem than the others.

‘Though what kind of marriage you think we’re going to have when we come from such different worlds I cannot imagine.’ Alec turned from her and ran his fingers through his hair, before turning back on her. ‘You know nothing about me at all. So what on earth possessed you to make a play for me like this? I can only think it some kind of attempt to prove you could triumph where all the others had failed.’

‘You arrogant oaf,’ she hissed. ‘I didn’t make a play for you at all. I detest you.’

‘Then what the hell was all that...fondling about? You cannot deny you got me all primed up before leading me out here.’

‘No, but I didn’t know it was you under that wig!’ She pointed wildly at the heap of horsehair lying on the floor. ‘I thought it was Sir Isaac Newton!’

‘You were attempting to seduce a man who’s been dead two hundred years?’

‘Oh, don’t be so stupid. I mean the man who came to the masquerade disguised as Sir Isaac Newton, of course!’

Of course. That made sense. She wouldn’t have looked so dejected if he had been the man she was trying to compromise.

But, what kind of man came to a Christmas masquerade dressed as Sir Isaac Newton? What did Sir Isaac look like anyway? And then he realised.

‘That man who found us. He was wearing a full-skirted coat like this.’ Though he’d discarded his wig, and tricorne hat—had he ever been wearing one. ‘You mean to tell me he was the one you intended to seduce?’

‘I never intended to seduce him,’ she protested, clenching her fists as she squared up to him. ‘I thought we would just kiss a bit. And then Marianne and Nellie would find us, and because Nellie is an outsider, Father would agree David and I would have to get married.’

‘If kissing was all that had happened, it’s more likely your father would have paid the singer to keep her mouth shut and have taken a horsewhip to that David.’ Actually, he felt like taking a horsewhip to the man himself. The pompous bag of wind had marched out and left her lying in the arms of what any gentleman would have assumed was her seducer. What kind of man abandoned a girl, a sheltered, pampered innocent, just when she needed help the most?

‘He isn’t worthy of you,’ he growled, incensed now that, after the lengths she’d gone to in order to strong-arm him into marriage, all the ungrateful oaf had done was look at her as though she was something nasty he’d stepped in.

‘How dare you say that! Just because his parents have no title, and only modest means, it doesn’t mean he’s a nobody.’

He hadn’t said the man was a nobody. So she must be reacting to arguments she’d heard from someone else about the pompous bladder of wind’s unsuitability.

‘He is the son of a gentleman,’ she carried on, indignantly.

Though her anger was completely misdirected, at least she’d cast off that pitiful, dejected air that made him feel like a clumsy great gowk.

‘And one day, he will be somebody. He’s studying medicine. He’s going to make great discoveries and become famous! So I wouldn’t be throwing myself away on him. And anyway, I love him.’

‘Well, he doesn’t love you.’

‘How can you possibly know anything of the sort? Of course he does.’

‘No, he doesn’t. Or he wouldn’t have looked at you that way.’

‘What way? I mean—naturally, he was very shocked. And...and disappointed.’

‘But not devastated. Any real man who was in love would have attempted to strangle the man who’d got there first, not turn his nose up as if he’d smelled something bad.’

She reeled as if he’d struck her. He firmed his jaw. Better to get her to face facts now, than have her mooning over the man for months. He’d far rather have her angry and spitting fire when he marched her down the aisle, than drooping on the verge of tears.

‘Come on,’ he said, gripping her arm and towing her towards the window. ‘We need to go find your father and make the best of this.’

* * *

‘Wait,’ Julia gasped, struggling ineffectually to shake off his hand. He had to let go of it eventually, to throw up the sash. Once he’d done so, he held his hand out again, imperiously.

Instead of taking it, she backed away. They couldn’t go and tell her father what they’d done! She couldn’t bear his disappointment, on top of her own. Or worse, his disapproval. So far, he’d never subjected her to the chilling antipathy he invariably displayed towards her older half-brothers. She’d been prepared to brave it for David’s sake. But for this man? This stranger? No.

‘Look...’ He sighed. ‘I know I shouted. And, yes, I’m angry, very angry, but I promise, you don’t need to be afraid of me.’

‘I’m not afraid of you.’

‘Then what is the matter? You’ve got to face the facts, woman. You cannot very well pretend this never happened. I ken well it wasn’t with the man you intended, but the end must be the same.’

‘No. No, there must be some other way...’

‘There isn’t. The only way to make this right is to marry.’

‘You think marrying a stranger could ever make anything right?’

‘It will make it the rightest it can be.’ He stepped over the sill, leaned back inside, and hauled her out after him.

She’d already discovered he was too strong to make struggling with him anything but undignified. So, she simply trotted along behind him, though her mind was racing as fast as he was obliging her legs to go.

* * *

Thank goodness she’d stopped trying to resist. There was no time to waste. Alec didn’t trust any of those three to keep their mouths shut. Not for very long, anyway. And he needed to get this mess straightened out before they had a chance to do any damage. The very last thing he needed right now was a rumour going round that would blacken his reputation. He’d had to work twice as hard to gain his present rank, as men with family sponsors greased their way into promotions and fat prizes. He wasn’t going to let this silly girl bring it all crashing down round his ears.

‘Weeping and wailing isn’t going to make this go away,’ he said harshly, when he heard what sounded suspiciously like a stifled sob. Alec clasped his fingers round her wrist a little tighter as a fresh wave of indignation had him lengthening his stride. If it had been Sir Isaac Newton dragging her through this shrubbery to confront her father, she would be cock-a-hoop. No man liked to have a woman think of him as second best. Second best? Not even that. She’d been looking at him as though he was some kind of ogre ever since he’d removed his mask and she’d seen exactly who he was.